SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Have not found the courage to fully share my story but desperately need help coping with the constant images in my head of my wife with another man.

Her 3 month fling occurred in 2011 during her one-week a month travel for work. I just discovered the affair in February 2014. We are together and I am trying to forgive her infidelity but the mind movies and images that play in my head over and over again every day are haunting and painful.

I love her with all my heart. I just want the nightmares to end.

Please help me through this.

BTDT too many times to count. I needed all the details to be able to compartmentalize them. Painful to hear, that for sure. But for me, my imagination was worse. They dont go away but are fading a bit or less frequent. Id be a vegetable if i were to sit and dwell on it all day. Try to keep busy, idle time is a killer.

Godspeed my friend. Wish you the best.

MyEverything,

I'm new to this whole mess as well and suffer from exactly the same issue you are. The constant, never ending movie playing back in our minds. I suffer with it every second of every day so I do know and understand your pain.

While I'm still too new at this to offer much advice I can share something that's helped me. I just let the movie play itself out. I gave the painful thoughts the attention they deserve and tried to let it pass over me and through me. I accepted that its something forever burned into my mind but at the same time allowing myself to feel that horrific pain in full gave me the strength to shelve most of it right next to scary war images you see from time to time.

It doesn't mean I'll ever forget it but classifying it within my own mind gave me the inner will to push it from my active consciousness and into the realm of things best not remembered. The problem for me is that there are more than a couple of those horror flics to deal with. It's a process that's going to take time.

I wish I had more to offer. I feel your pain brother. I really do. I'll add you to my prayers and wish you the very best in pushing those thoughts aside so your heart can heal.

I wish I had better advice and perhaps some do and will chime in. I struggle with this on a daily basis and I'm 10 months from DDAY.

I have pictures to go along with my mind movies and descriptive texts so you can imagine how my mind movies play.

I'm hoping to get some relief from this soon. Perhaps time is the answer? I know that I'm the only one in charge of my thoughts but I can't seem to push them aside for the time being.

I will be reading the posts to you. I’m months into this tragic drama and I also have vivid pictures and a diary with graphic detail describing what went on between my wife and her lover. I live 24/7 with this horror. I’m at work, driving home, reading the newspaper, almost anything will set my imagination racing and the pictures are in color and 3-D. It’s like I’m watching a porn movie and my wife is the star. I go to the Y to work out and forget, there in front of me is a man or woman who resembles my wife or her lover, and the movies start. I wake up shaking from the dreams. When I day dream about getting even I delude myself into feeling better. The only positive thing to happen from all this is I’ve lost weight. When I figure how to handle this, I’ll let you know. Please remember you are not alone, God bless.

When I thought that A was going on I experienced a lot of mind movies. Wow. What a wild imagination! It got to the point where my blood pressure skyrocketed. Never suffered from that problem before. Then came D-Day and that made it even worse. MC who said she experience the same thing with her WH previously, advised me to attempt to block out the images playing in my mind. That she had to do the same.

By the time I filed for D 6 months later, I no longer have the images. That is because I don't have any respect left for WW. I don't trust her and don't care what she does. I don't checkup on her anymore. Just waiting for D to be completed.

It basically was a transition for me.

MyEverything:

This part is one of the hardest to reckon with. Most Betrayeds deal with this torment for weeks or months- and it can be triggered even years later by random miscellany.

The diary, I'm sure, makes it all the harder. I'm really sorry you are having to contend with that. I hope your wife's contrition, in light of that, is overwhelmingly generous to you. And frankly, that her guilt for this trauma she inflicted is every bit as painful.

It needs to be, both for you to heal, and for her to never again be tempted to stray.

Wow. Uhtred I have poems I was fortunate to find in by computer. It is so hard it seems like you never know when it will hit

I hear you on this one. The last three or four months have been hell for me. Running into her old A partner accidentally triggered my ptsd. Twenty-four years have passed but it is like it was yesterday. Everyone on here has your back.

Wishing the best for you.

i get them too.

i wish i had the texts and emails, chats, etc from my wife to the guys she cheated on me with. she deleted them before i saw them. now she cant remember many of the details. id rather know than not, imagination is worse than reality ... i think

I think everyone goes through this during the weeks and months after discovery. Who can help it? It is even more horrific if the considerate idiots have taken the trouble to document it all either via email, pictures or diary entries. Why do they do that? Is it a feather in their cap or something?

These mind movies are a way of telling ourselves the story in our own words, whether or not the things in these images actually happened as we picture them or not. They might as well have, such is the hurt and shock of infidelity. After a while, the images take on a different frame, they start to fade and get replaced by something else. I can say this now that I am 3 years out from D-Day.

A good IC will help you deal with these images, acknowledge them and then put them away while you get on with the other business of your daily life. It's not something that will happen overnight. Relaxation tapes help if only for an hour or two.

Just know that we all go through this and are with you.

Hugs to everyone.

EJ

My friend......I feel your pain...I lived it for a long time.

Here is what worked for me. I worked out like a demon possesed. I had regular nightmarish workouts to get my brain "right"...but when I was hit by movies or images...I would do something physical.....on the spot. Not many can do this, but I have a door on my office and I would shut it and do something painful like burpees or core rapidly.

The second thing I did was two parts.....One...when the movie or image hit...I would vision a huge stop sign...and a booming voice that said stop!

The other was a thing I did when movies played...I would envision someting terrible happening.....for instance....when I had a movies about them doing it in his truck....I had a train hit it.....or in the beach hotel.....a tsunami smash into the hotel.... stupid shit like that....but....it worked.....

I am 3.25 years out now.....and it has gotten a million times better......I accepted that it happened.....I accepted that I couldnt do anything to stop or change it.....and I accepted that no matter what I do....I can not change what happened.....and there was no more use in punishing myself.

Ellie....our DDays were 6 days apart.....prayers to you....to think someone was going through the same hell that week that I was.....ugh

...I would vision a huge stop sign...and a booming voice that said stop!

The other was a thing I did when movies played...I would envision someting terrible happening.....for instance....when I had a movies about them doing it in his truck....I had a train hit it.....or in the beach hotel.....a tsunami smash into the hotel.... stupid shit like that....but....it worked.....

That sounds brilliant Long Gone. I might try some of these myself

Whatever works can only be a good thing.

I have had some hideous dreams over the past three years, I have even had comical ones even though that sounds bizarre. When I have had a particularly distressing nightmare I have written it down and then burnt it in the kitchen sink. It is quite therapeutic to see the ashes disappear down the drain. Make sure you keep the flames away from the kitchen curtains.

(((MyEverything)))

and to all going through this. It is an absolute bugger.

EJ

MyEverything

I hope you share your story sooner rather than later.

Talking about it helps.

HM

Do you want to know all the details? If so, tell her! Sometimes what is going through your imagination is FAR worse than the reality.

MyEverything,

I am so sorry that you are going through this also. It is something else we have to deal with, as part of the betray situation. Like, it is not enough already. My heart goes out to you. I'm new to this forum as well, my D-day was just 5 months ago and the movies and visions are still playing daily in my mind. The fact that I'm not living with WBF helps a little. I try to keep myself busy as much as I can. But I believe that time will eventually fade them away little by little. Please, keep strong, and know that we are all in this together. Sending you a lot of strength and hugs..Take care...